Dr. Helen Caldicott, one of the world's most determined peace activists, is imploring Pope John Paul II to go to Baghdad as he is the "only person on earth who can stop this war" in Iraq.

Caldicott has organized a letter writing and e-mail petition, urging people around the world to write to the 82-year-old Pope asking him to travel to Baghdad and stay there until peace has been achieved.

"Your physical presence in Baghdad will prevent the impending slaughter of hundreds of thousands of human beings," her letter says.

The Australian-born Caldicott, who has written extensively on the nuclear threat, is a former Harvard professor, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility and subject of the award winning film If You Love This Planet.

In her letter, circulated on the Internet, she urges ordinary people to make their opposition to war known and send a "mountain" of letters, e-mails, faxes and phone calls to the Vatican to persuade the Pope of the need for his immediate, unprecedented action.

"The Pope's presence in Iraq will act as the ultimate human shield," she writes. Though the Bush administration has shown "no reservations about slaughtering up to 500,000 innocents in Iraq, there is one person whose life they absolutely will not risk. That person is Pope John Paul II."

[[Note: To see Dr. Caldicott's Appeal to the Pope, and her sample letter, just go to the Common Dreams URL.]]

Dear Friends:
Word has reached us that the Vatican has blocked the original e-mail we sent out giving the address [accreditamenti (at) pressva.va], apparently due to an overwhelming response to Dr. Helen Caldicott's appeal to write the Pope, urging him to fly to Iraq. The new e-mail address given above has worked so far, but we urge you to send both e-mail AND an AIRMAIL letter, so as to assure your communication reaches the Pope. We think that the arrival of sacks of mail at the Vatican (in anticipation of which the media has been notified) will have its own impact.

People of many faiths and ethnic backgrounds believe that if the Pope were to go to Iraq, that it would stop the war, and have asked him to go. Is there any actual evidence that this somehow might be a "Zionist plot", or is it just personal speculation?

A first saw similar requests for the pope to act as a human shield on various IMC sites a couple days ago. This stuff came shortly after he had made the strong remark that received good media coverage, that "war was a defeat for humanity." My initial reaction was that this idea had come from an anti-Catholic bigot-warmonger hoping to ridicule the Pope for his moral anti-war talk.

It may be that in wartime, I get too suspicious of everything that I read. I wanted to see some confirmation that Helen Caldicott had anything to do with this. I found some. I have admired Helen's work in the pass, but on this she is naive. Perhaps she does not know Bush very well.

Part of her statement was that "The lives of the people of Iraq rest in your hands, as does the fate of the world." is senseless. Let's not make the Pope responsible for the war. That's crazy. The real warmongers could simply bomb around the Pope (or President Carter) or any other distinguished person, and if such a person were to get harmed by intention or accident, our propaganda mill would have their alibi ready. We would be told that the deed was the result of a gone astray Iraqui missile that fired by nervous Iraqui soldiers, or something similar.

I have a lot of respect for Caldicott and I am sorry to see that she would support such a moronic idea.